TGIF Thankful for . . .

I am thankful that my family is able to homeschool.  I know many people do not have the opportunity to choose this life, regardless of whether they have the inclination.  But for me, it is one of my dearest blessings.  It isn't always easy, and sometimes I go a little crazy trying to make it all work, but it is absolutely worth it for us.

I've decided to make myself a little Thank Goodness It's Friday project, and we'll see how it works out.  This will be my weekly reminder to share something I love about homeschooling with all of you.

This week: I love having recess first (or anytime).

When the children have been cooped up due to lousy weather, have too much energy to get anything done, have been good and deserve a treat, or simply just because; we can go outside and run around.  This whole week, the children have been itching to get outside and enjoy the nice weather as soon as they wake up.  I am so thankful that I can just let them go and not worry about schoolwork until later in the day.  I don't have to get them packed up for the bus and miss out on all their crazy-morning-energy fun.

--Little Miss Crazy

Bouncing, Balloons, and Balance

Gravity is easy-peasy to study.  We dropped things.  And jumped off things.  And bounced balls.  And watched my new favorite SchoolHouse Rock! song & video about gravity.  (Goblin LOVES this song and made us listen to it over and over for days!)  We also briefly discussed 2 physicists who are part of the history of our understanding of gravity, Galileo and Isaac Newton.  The kids colored a picture of Isaac Newton from Color Me Physics  (I'm saving the Galileo page for when we get into astronomy).

Although the kids had a BLAST jumping around the house and dropping everything they could find, the real fun came when we investigated an object's center of gravity.  We took a balloon and filled it with water (you can use a water balloon if you prefer, I found it worked just fine with a regular balloon I had on hand), then tied it off.  We put that balloon INSIDE of another balloon, which I blew up like normal.  (The tricky part was getting the water-filled balloon into the empty balloon, so I enlisted help from Athena.)

Here's what it looks like when you're ready to play (with the light behind it, you can see the smaller water-filled balloon inside your standard balloon:

The balloon filled with water moves around inside the balloon filled with air, changing its center of gravity-- and making for some fun crazy games!  (FYI, our first balloon popped-- not the water one, just the outer one--after the kids took it outside, so we quickly made another.)  For our basic demonstration, I just had the kids toss it back and forth between them, noticing how hard it was to make the balloon move in the direction they wanted.  (We also blew up a balloon-- without putting a false center of gravity inside-- to use as a comparison.)  Afterward, the kids came up with their own ideas of how to play with the balloon, which was awesome to see.

Finally we discussed how an object's center of gravity affects its balance.  We tried to balance quarters on top of pencils, then added forks on either side to create a larger center, making it easier to balance.

Our physics kit also included this goofy clown balancing on his nose.  We attached a few paperclips to the hands and balanced him on a pencil too.  Goblin really liked this guy, so he decided to try to balance it on his nose-- mission accomplished!

Every good science lesson needs to be recorded in journals.

I love seeing their pictures and hearing their explanations.  When they understand what they've learned, it is very simple and to the point, and you can always tell what makes an impact.

--Little Miss Crazy

Magic and Hovercrafts

You know it's going to be a good week when your science lessons feel like magic tricks . . . and they work!  I've always been terrible at magic tricks: even when I know how they work and how to do them, they never seem to work for me.  It can be a bit depressing.  So I was a little worried about whether or not I would be able to pull off our lessons this week.  But it the end: Voila!

When you remove the card (quickly-- flicking it forward works much better than pulling it out, for your information), the pennies stay in place . . . until gravity pulls them down into the cup. One basic, concrete example of the concept of inertia: an object at rest tends to stay at rest (until acted on by a force).

It's such a simple idea, but they kept doing this one (and asking me to do it) over and over again, long after lesson time was done.

We also made a stack of pennies and pushed a single penny across the table into it, replacing the bottom coin.  This one did not work every time, but it worked at least half of the times we tried it, which is pretty good in my book.

Being a bit of a worrier, I drew the line at trying to pull a tablecloth out from under a table full of dishes.  If I could have gotten it down, it would have been pretty impressive.  Maybe next time we talk about Newton's laws. :)

Many of my favorite ideas for our studies (some that we used and some that we didn't) came from E is for Explore!. I strongly suggest checking out what they have compiled.

Continuing on to the flip side of Newton's First Law-- objects in motion tend to remain in motion-- I added in a discussion of friction, which gave us the opportunity to play with an air puck aka a hovercraft!  We made ours from the materials that came in our Physics kit, but there is a great how-to on Scribbit to make one using common household materials.

To start out, I hid the balloon and tapped the puck, moving it across the table to show the children how far it would go.  Then we built the hovercraft and let it float across the tabletop to see how much farther it would go with a cushion of air underneath.  I asked the kids why the distances the puck travelled were so different.  It took some thinking, but they figured out that the puck rubbed on the table and that slowed it down.  Then, we all rubbed our hands together quickly to see how the heat builds up and lets us know there is friction between them.

For a little fun at the end of the day, we also watched The Magic School Bus Plays Ball on youtube, which has a great discussion of friction and force as well.

I was so tempted to run right out and buy a kids' air hockey table to go along with our discussion, but that did seem a little overboard.  The kiddoes used our air puck on the kitchen table in the same way, but bumpers would have been a great addition!  They batted it back and forth from one end of the table to the other until all the air was gone, then blew it back up and started again!

Most of what we did this week was so simple, which proved to be a big part of what made it all work so well.  The kids were fascinated to see everyday items used in ways that seem magical and amazing.  And not only could they watch the magic, but they could actually DO the magic themselves. Based on the entries in their journals afterwards, they even understood WHY the magic was working.  Watching learning happen right before my eyes is my favorite kind of magic. ;)

--Little Miss Crazy

Mummies in the Kitchen

You can't work on Egypt without doing some awesome mummy projects!  Our Egypt study was no different.  Although it would have made more sense to make our mummies during the weeks when we first discussed them, that was also the week we made pyramids.  I figured everyone would have a lot more fun if we split those two project groups up so we would have our fun stuff stretched out instead of having one very busy week with a few less interesting weeks.

Our discussion this week revolved around some of the better-known pharaohs of the New Kingdom of Egypt: Thutmose (aka the General), Hatshepsut (first female pharaoh), Akenaten (Egypt's first monotheist leader), and Tutankamen (the boy king buried with gold).  Athena was very impressed with Hatshepsut, and everyone was excited to talk about the curse on Tut's tomb.  However, the real fun was absolutely making mummies.

Athena read Aliki's Mummies Made in Egypt for additional background information and details.  We followed along with our Barbie 'corpse' for the process.

We drew marks with a Sharpie for the incisions to remove the organs.  I made little organs out of foam for us to "remove," and they each picked which one they wanted to "preserve." The kids laughed so hard when I literally threw the brain away (over my shoulder). We didn't have any little containers to put the other organs in, but they did go in the tomb when our mummy was ready to be buried.

They rubbed the doll with salt to represent the natron used in mummification, then washed it with oil (olive oil) and spices (cinnamon) before beginning the wrapping.  I also had the children choose some amulets which I made out of foam, and they included them in the mummy's wrappings.

They needed some grown-up help getting the mummy wrapped tightly (especially since our sarcophagus (being a pencil case) was a little cramped. :)  But in the end, it turned out very well and fit just fine.  The box from our Egypt kit became the mummy's tomb and inside we placed a statue and a necklace (also from the kit), along with the organs and of course our mummy in its sarcophagus.

Since the process of mummification itself is so interesting, we dedicated science time to it as well, so we got to do a second project: apple mummies!  Just a few simple ingredients but fun and interesting.

We sliced an apple in fourths (so they would easily fit in our cups and so the kids could see the effects on both the skin and flesh of the apples).  The first quarter we put into a cup with nothing added and set it aside.  The second quarter we put in a cup with 1/2 cup of salt mixed with 1/2 cup of baking soda for very basic solution.  And Goblin ate the other 2 quarters. :)

We left them on top of the cupboard for about a week and a half (I think it was closer to two weeks when we finally took a look at them, due to Easter falling in the middle), then inspected our results.

 

The kids all noticed that the salt and soda solution in the apple mummy's cup had hardened.  Everyone wanted to touch it, so I poured it into a dish.  The apple itself had darkened considerably and was curled tightly together.  They could tell it was much smaller than it had started out.

They compared it to the apple which had been by itself and found a lot of similarities (neither looked very edible according to Athena lol) and some differences: the apple mummy was much smaller and felt hard but the skin was smooth while the non-mummified apple was all wrinkly.

We all had such a good time this week, and it was really nice to be able to pull some science into our history discussions to show the kiddoes the why and how as well as the what. 

--Little Miss Crazy

Starting over with RightStart

I've been meaning to do a post on math for a while now, but now it goes by so quickly that I forget about it almost as soon as our school time ends.  I think we have finally found our stride for math, and I am hoping the kids continue to thrive in their programs.

Math has been our biggest stumbling block all year, and this is saying a lot when you think about the things we cover each week.  I'm making my own science curriculum and sometimes we skip it entirely because I'm not prepared to continue.  Our history curriculum is simple, but I keep altering the order we work on subjects within our timeframe.  Art is usually incorporated in with something else, so if I don't come up with an art-related history or science project, it doesn't really get done at all.  But even with all the craziness related to our other subject matter, math still comes out as being our most inconsistent subject.

We just started onto our third math curriculum, and I think we finally have something that will work for me and for the children, which has been amazingly hard to find.

We started the year out with Ray's Arithmetic (plus some supplemental materials to cover the non-arithmetic subject matter) because Mr. Crazy and I both liked the approach and thought the kids would do well with it.  We went through Ray's orally: I would read the lesson to Athena, and she would work out the problems in her math binder.  This seemed to work for a while, but when we did review to check her retention, it just was not there, which was very discouraging.

So we moved on to Math Mammoth because it was inexpensive but very well reviewed.  We also thought that it would work better for Athena since she was used to a workbook approach to math from her years in public school.  MM was a total flop as far as Athena was concerned.  More often than not, she ended her math lesson in tears.  It also did not work well for Goblin: I moved him into the program very slowly (the first level is made for first graders, and he is a prek'er), but he didn't like the structure at all.  However, it has turned out to be an excellent program for Hulk.  He is my worksheet loving child, so the setup really appeals to him, especially since he can do most of the lessons on his own.  I do sit down with him to explain his lesson at the beginning of each day, and certain sections are made to be done together. However, he can do a great deal of it solo, which he loves.

Now Goblin and Athena are transitioning into RightStart math (I asked Hulk if he wanted to try the new program too, but he is loving MM too much to switch, which is fine with me). This was a hard choice for me because I really did not want something teacher intensive for math AND it is an expensive program.  But we finally decided it was the way to go and picked up the full elementary kit.  Goblin is working on RS A and just zooms through the lessons and REALLY enjoys them.  I believe that the variety within the lessons and the amount of 'goofiness' and game-playing in this program has him hooked. Athena is working on the Transition Lessons, then will be going into level C.  Even though we are doing 2 and sometimes 3 lessons a day, she is still spending less time on her math than before and retaining more information.  Again, I think the games really do a lot to make this program something that will work for pretty much any type of child.

The absolute best thing about RightStart (for us) has been the card games.  Even though Hulk isn't using the program, we all play the card games.  I haven't found one yet that doesn't excite them.  Even just the variations on regular card games (War, Go Fish, Memory, etc) using the different card decks have been so fun and such a great learning experience for everyone.  This was definitely one investment that has paid off tenfold in the short time since we made our purchase.  I cannot wait to see how much fun we have with all our manipulatives and games in the next few years.

--Little Miss Crazy